Michael Kong, CEO of Sonic (ex-Fantom), on Reclaiming DeFi Narrative and Building a Bridge With a Fast Lane | Ep. 374

Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab recently sat down for an exclusive chat with Michael Kong, CEO and CIO of Sonic Labs (previously Fantom ), the team behind the EVM chain Sonic and an incubator for developers to build novel dapps.

Kong discussed the upcoming launch of the Sonic mainnet with a full stack of novel technology, explaining what makes the chain far faster than anything currently available.

He talked about the importance of having a set launch date, reclaiming a main position in the DeFi ecosystem, and building an extra-secure bridge with a fast lane.

Sonic’s Big Advantage: Having a Set Launch Date

Earlier this year, the Fantom Foundation, the driving force behind the Fantom decentralized network, rebranded to Sonic , an EVM chain with a gateway to Ethereum and 1-block finality.

With this, the FTM token turned to the S token.

Rather than “trying to change a plane that’s already flying,” the team decided to launch a new chain and, with it, a new brand to “refresh it.”

Sonic’s customers, Kong said, are developers and users. Therefore, they had to make a product compelling for developers to build their applications on, but also incentivize users.

Builders are running a business and want to launch on the chain they believe will benefit them the most.

Many builders who’ve already created applications or are nearly there look for such a chain.

In Sonic’s case, developers are “encouraged” by the available and clear roadmap, the information on the chain, the technology it encompasses, and what exactly it offers to whom.

Kong said that having a definitive date of launch is reassuring to developers.

The builders see it as “if the promises are true in regards to what they’re claiming in terms of scalability and time to finality, my app is just going to fly on their chain, and it’s just going to make my life a lot easier,” said Kong.

Also, initiatives such as gas monetization—allowing people to earn up to 90% of the transaction fees they generate—are very compelling as an additional monetary stream.

So, instead of going through the arduous process of building their own chains, developers just need to “worry about optimizing your application, and you get all these benefits.”

Reclaiming the DeFi Narrative

Regarding narrative or branding, Sonic wants to focus on applications related to DeFi.

Fantom was, at certain points, the second most popular chain in terms of DeFi, just behind Ethereum.

“I think that’s the position we can reclaim again,” Kong commented.

Per the CEO, Sonic can “get really big” by mainly focusing on this space, but also “making it clear that the chain is available for any sort of application that needs high throughput and scalability.” Gaming is a good example, he said.

Speaking of which, many types of DeFi applications will be coming to Sonic. This includes lending, borrowing, perp DEXs, typical DEXs, standard dapps, and more.

Notably, “there are some very well-known applications that are looking to deploy on Sonic soon after it’s launched,” Kong said.

Meanwhile, when the team started developing the Sonic technology some two years ago, they specifically looked into the areas they needed to optimize.

One of these is block processing or transaction processing. They’ve optimized this process in two main ways.

One is creating a new database that can store blockchain-related data “in an even more efficient manner than other traditional databases.”

The other is building their own virtual machine. It is an optimized version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

It makes it “much more efficient to be able to execute smart contracts and transactions.”

Thanks to these optimizations, they got faster transactions: lower confirmation times (time to finality) and higher transaction throughput, further leading to scalability.

Furthermore, the team plans to build an entirely new consensus in 2025, which will “dramatically increase the speed of Sonic.”

The Tech Works ‘Really Well’ – As Designed

Sonic is working on launching the mainnet. According to Kong, it should go live in the first week of December.

In fact, the Sonic technology is fully developed, including the L1 and the bridge.

In the meantime, everything needs to be thoroughly tested.

The testnet is, of course, very helpful here for several reasons. It gets the “message out,” allows people to interact with the tech, allows the team to demonstrate the technology, and provides feedback.

What issues they found will be fixed for the mainnet launch.

What the team discovered so far is that it takes “seven hundred milliseconds or 0.7 seconds to confirm a transaction on the network. […] It looks very promising,” Kong remarked.

He added that “we’re very confident that this technology is going to work really well, exactly as we think it will.”

A new gateway (bridge) technology is also ready. The Sonic team recently sent all related documentation to three separate auditors.

Building a Bridge With a Fast Lane

And speaking of the new gateway…

According to Kong, Sonic’s token bridging solution is already much faster, cheaper, and more secure than existing solutions. It also has fail-safe mechanisms.

The Sonic Gateway requires only 10 minutes to transfer from Ethereum to Sonic and one hour to transfer from Sonic to Ethereum.

Notably, this occurs at regular intervals. Every 10 minutes / 1 hour, the whole bunch of transactions get confirmed.

In comparison, it can take a week to go from an L2 to an L1.

However, the Sonic Gateway will also include ‘a fast-lane feature,’ which will allow users to pay an extra fee for a transaction to be confirmed. The fee will likely be $2.5, Kong said.

A major motivation behind the bridge is that many assets are sitting on Ethereum specifically, and “we want them to be moved over to Sonic as part of the DeFi ecosystem.”

Additionally, in the unlikely event that the bridge or the network goes down, users can retrieve assets completely on the chain they bridge from (in this case, Ethereum).

Kong says the team does this in a decentralized manner. The validators participating in the consensus for the Sonic network are the same validators who participate in the confirmation of the gateway.

The team doesn’t hold control, he concluded.

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That’s not all.

In this interview, Kong also discussed:

• the rebrand from Fantom and FTM to Sonic and S;
• launching at the end of the year – ahead of many other chains;
• Sonic Boom: 200 million S airdrop to spur adoption of the network;
• creating major partnerships;
• attending Token2409 in Singapore.

You can watch the full podcast episode here.

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About Michael Kong

Michael Kong is CEO and CIO of Sonic Labs (previously Fantom), the team behind the EVM chain Sonic and an incubator for developers to build novel dapps.

He is an influential thought leader and developer focused on expanding blockchain technology.

Before Sonic, Kong served as CTO of myStake, Digital Currency Holdings, and Liberté & Co.

He has also been a part of the ETH community since 2016.